


Hands

by etherati



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dark, Established Relationship, Graphic Sex, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masochism, One Shot, Pre-Roche, Ror Has Issues, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:04:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes a kink is not just a kink. Sometimes you don't even realize the damage you're doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Kinkmeme prompt: Rorschach has a need to be abused/in pain to validate his sexuality and Dan's torn between his freaky side and the side of him that's appalled. This is VERY outside the box for me - but, I think, a valid alternate characterization.

*

_This is good, _he thinks, sinking back into the damp strands of shadow, letting them twine around his wrists and ankles and pull him in. A shallow doorway, blackened by the soot of a thousand stubbed-out cigarettes and witness to just as many lies, broken promises, whispering hands – and had she stood here once, hand on one hip, smiling fake desire through the ugliness of her face and tempting bad men away from their diversions and good men away from their homes?

Yes. This is an appropriate place for this sort of thing. It’s not _right, _ but it’s appropriate.

Daniel’s cock is heavy in his hand, his partner’s presence an overwhelming thing, all sharp noises and sharper motions and the hot-wet slide of his tongue between mask and scarf, and Rorschach isn’t sure if he wants to be the whore or the trick here; or the child, wide-eyed and uncomprehending, stranded in that paralyzing rectangle of light forever. Cares and doesn’t care how the other man is cast in this, but Daniel is whining against his throat now with an urgency that does not suggest a man who’s paid for his prize. Too assertive for a whore, too kind for a rapist and Rorschach wants this too much to call himself a victim. Nothing fits, and the lie is too big, its shape too awkward to place.

It _has_ to fit, he has to make it make sense. He growls; angles his throat against the lips and teeth and silently, _bite down, bite down, please, just–_

But then Daniel has them both in hand, warm leather soft over the seeping-slick flesh, and the teeth don’t come and the back of the hand and the lit end looming closer and the scrabbling shadows all jagged with points of light–

[You avoid these pools of darkness because you are only seven but you already know what hides in them, waiting, waitingwaitingwaiting]

–and he’s coming over those relentless fingers before he has time to think _no_ and _not like this_ and _it’s supposed to hurt_ and

and

_ (there is no room in the dark for this, for this tenderness.) _

*

Daniel has him pressed into one of Archie’s chairs, is leaning over him, knees crooked into his elbows and pushing himself inside and Rorschach knows who the filth is now,

_ (whore whoretrick whoreson) _

who’s rolled onto his back, who’s letting himself be used and used and thrown away. He scrabbles for Daniel’s hands; presses them to his own throat because he cannot stand this, cannot stand the gentleness, the way Daniel’s moving so carefully, the way none of this makes sense and the heat sinking into him is too much, too close. He needs not to feel it.

“Whoa,” Daniel says, pulling back on the grip. “I’m not going to do that,” he says, but there’s a light in his eyes that means he _wants_ to. Rorschach growls, pulling down on his hands harder, canting his hips up in encouragement.

“I’m serious,” and Daniel’s eyes are dark and shining, crescent-moons of reflected light slivered over blackness. “That’s dangerous, you could get killed.”

And he means it and that’s the most frustrating part, because Rorschach knows he will never find the words to explain that in these places, these little pockets between the sky and damnation, he is already dead, is always dead. That he’s just a body that wants satisfaction, that wants what it deserves.

“…_please_, Daniel,” he finally says, and he can feel the sweat beading under the mask, running to catch in a hollow of skin and bone.

After a long moment, Daniel relents to rub his thumbs heavy over the pulse points in his throat – to rub and then press in, hard, and it’s so much faster and more effective than just losing his airway and the last thing Rorschach thinks he sees, before bright-white honeycomb overtakes his senses and the thrusting takes on an edge of violence and he feels his orgasm rise and crash against some distant shore, is the pained confusion spread thick across Daniel’s face.

*

A wildness lurks in Daniel’s eyes sometimes, as he refuses and gives in, as he wars between the gentleness that lives in his hands and the violence that rides in both their hearts, that drives them onto the streets and into the rough and dizzy space that exists wherever they stand too close, hesitate on the edge of uncertainty for too long.

He’s dragging them both down, he realizes disconnectedly, the blood distracting as it slips from under teeth, down his back, settles into the wells of his spine. Down and down, and he still isn’t sure who he is.

*

“We need to talk about this,” Daniel says, and he’s the child this time, hands between his knees, head hung and Rorschach isn’t naïve enough to wonder what it is he’s ashamed of. The air is thick with the scent of burning paper and tobacco and skin, oppressive in a room not used to it; Daniel doesn’t smoke, has never smoked.

“Nothing to talk about.”

“I think–”

“Nothing, Daniel.” Rorschach is stretched flat on the bed, a livid burn fresh in the muscle of his shoulder, obscene wetness sticking between his thighs. If he stares for long enough, he can see all the cracks in the ceiling, plastered over but still there; they might be a map, or a picture. They might just be cracks.

“I can’t do this kind of shit, man. I don’t care if it’s what you want, I can’t–”

They’re just cracks. Rorschach rolls his head to the side; focuses on where the mattress dips under Daniel’s weight. Doesn’t look any higher. “Seemed to enjoy it well enough at the time.”

And it’s the truth and there’s nothing to say to that, so it’s no surprise when the silence just grows.

*

He’s climbing on top – there’s garbage everywhere, sirens not far off, the sound of rats’ feet and sodden newspapers and so much filth and it’s dark here – and he’s climbing on top because if Daniel won’t punish him for these acts then he will punish himself.

*

_ (whore whoretrick whore whore whore child whoreson child in the dark in the dark in the brilliant, blinding light…)_

(there is no room for tenderness in the darkness or in the light)

*

“What the _fuck_, man.”

Daniel’s angry. There’s blood _everywhere_ and Daniel’s catching him up from the sheets, and he’s angry but there’s no room for that, either. Just taking and pain and the light in his eyes that always shames him into dull catatonia afterwards, that makes those strong hands shake like a child’s.

“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Why did you…”

“Because you wouldn’t,” and Rorschach can hear that his voice sounds wrong, thin and wavery, and everything is starting to grey out and it feels like fingers around his throat and the spidery shadows of the alleyway, slipping past his mouth and into his gut and brain and that’s _good_, that’s right, and he’s–

*

When he wakes up, his arm is stitched and bandaged, and the room is dark. The hall is dark. At the end, a rectangle of light; the kitchen, and a humming from it that sounds forced. The too-hard clank of pans, a mug hitting the counter. The tension boiling out of that doorway is so thick that even cockroaches would sense it and scatter, even…

He slinks back to the guest room, head spinning with fractured light and shadow.

*

Three weeks later, Daniel ties his wrists to the bedposts, calm and deliberate. Sits back. His voice sounds like his fingers feel, gentle and warm, and this is no place for–

By the time his hands are untied again, Walter isn’t injured but he is broken because now Daniel knows all the things he was never meant to know, shaken out of him in pieces; all of the things that hands do under cover of shadow and all the scars that have faded deep under his skin. And Daniel doesn’t let go, even in this darkness, under the cracks that maybe aren’t just cracks, and the child is gone and the selfishness of the trick is gone and the whore still lingers around the sharp edges of his breath but Daniel breathes it in with him and holds him and he doesn’t let go.

And maybe there is room for this.

*


End file.
